An Experiment in Love

Name: An Experiment in Love
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Hilary Mantel
ISBN: 9781470366742

Author: Hilary Mantel

Narrator: Jane Collingwood

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 07/12/2013

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Carmel McBain is the only child of working-class Irish-Catholic parents. Her mother aspires to something more for her than what life in their depressed mill town has to offer. She is ambitious for her daughter, determined that she slip through England's rigid social barriers. And so, early on, she pushes Carmel, first to gain a scholarship to the local convent school, then to sit the exams for a place at London University. And Carmel does not disappoint. But success carries with it a fearful price. It sets her on a lonely journey that will take her as far as possible from where she began, uprooting her from the ties of class and place, of family and faith. Uprooting her ultimately from her own self. A coming-of-age novel, a memoir of a Catholic childhood, a piercing and witty look at social pretensions, a story of lost possibilities and girlhood betrayals: perhaps only a novelist of Hilary Mantel's enormous talents could have taken such material and shaped it into so fresh and arresting a tale.

About Hilary Mantel

English author, Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, was born in Glossop, Derbyshire in 1952. She attended St. Charles Roman Catholic primary school in the mill village of Hadfield. Her parents were actually Irish descent, but were born in England. Mantel's father divorced her mother and left when she was eleven years old. She never saw him again. Her mother did not marry, but spent her life with Jack Mantel, from whom Hilary took his name as her surname. Her schooling ended with a bachelor's degree in Jurisprudence in 1973. She then worked in social work in a geriatric hospital.

Her books include historical fiction, including a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell's rise to power under King Henry VIII. They were Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light (which was just released in the UK in March of 2020). She twice won the Booker Award.

In keeping with her unconventional life, Hilary married Gerald McEwen, a geologist in 1972, and they lived in exotic places such as Botswana and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They were divorced after he gave up geology to be her business manager, but then remarried.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Anastasia on November 08, 2009

Hilary Mantel never wastes a word, and it's only at the end of this brief book (as opposed to her Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, at 500-plus pages, anyway)that you realize how expertly she has woven every line and observation. She excels, in all her books, at the portrayal of not-so-likable people,......more

Goodreads review by Judy on August 09, 2010

I was so enchanted by Wolf Hall that I resolved to read Hilary Mantel's other novels. I had not heard of her before Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize and I don't think she was very well-known in the United States previously, but is highly respected in England. She has published ten novels, An Experime......more

Goodreads review by WndyJW on December 03, 2020

I was so pleased to find on my shelves a Hilary Mantel book that I hadn’t read. I thought I had read them all. As expected this was a solid 5 star. Fully realized, knowable, memorable characters, a sense of time and place, smart writing, and Dame Mantel’s signature dark humor.......more

Goodreads review by Richard on July 12, 2021

I am, to be completely honest, in awe of Mantel's writing. She has a very specific and recognisable voice which is not quite like anyone else's. This book is no exception and is a joy to read, and insightful into the experience of women in the 1960s and 70s in Britain. So a full 5 stars for the writ......more